Princeton Votes Against BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has experienced another failure on college campuses - this time, at Princeton University.

The divestment referendum called on the prestigious school to divest from companies or associations “that maintain the infrastructure of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, facilitate Israel’s and Egypt’s collective punishment of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or facilitate state repression against Palestinians by Israeli, Egyptian, and Palestinian Authority security force," according to the Daily Princetonian.

But of the 2,032 students who voted over the proposal, 52.5% voted against divesting from Israel, with a close 47.5% voting for the boycott.

The results surface days after the US Senate's Finance Committee adopted measures to counter BDS - and amid a worrying trend of using BDS as an excuse to single out Jewish students on college campuses.

Last week, a student coalition at Stanford University in California allegedly asked a Jewish candidate in the student government election whether her Jewish identity would impact her vote on divesting from Israel.

In February, the student board at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) interrogated a Jewish student running for the campus judicial committee, asking if her identity would influence her decision-making.

That same month, the 2014 National Demographic Survey of American Jewish College Students revealed a surprising rise in anti-Semitism on campuses, and demonstrated correlation between anti-Semitic activity and pro-Israel involvement.